Free Resources To Edit Your Photos

You are here for one of two reasons. You either need a photographer or you are learning to get better yourself. If it’s the former, please know that I am available and happy to help. But chances are that you are reading this from thousands of miles from Palm Springs. Maybe you want to learn to take photos and edit them by yourself?

The good news is, you can. The better news is, you can do it all for free. You just need to know where. Here is a list of the best resources to make professional edits to your photographs for free.

Pixlr free online tool

Photoshop costs thousands. Photoshop essentials costs $10/month. While a completely free alternative is Pixlr. There is no software, you do everything online. So, depending on your connection quality it may or may not be a problem. Understandably, uploading 100 50MB photos is not the same as playing Starburst slots for free online. Speed matters a lot.

But as far as the features, you get all the essential editing tools here. You can work with layers, histograms, it even looks very similar to Photoshop.

GIMP

If you do have a slow internet connection, GIMP is a free alternative software. It is open source, so not only it is updated frequently, there are various addons from developers you can use. But essentially, this is the closest to Photoshop you can get for free. It’s very powerful, especially after the recent updates. Plus, there is a ton of tutorials to learn from.

Let’s just say, it’s different While as a professional I don’t approve of the Instagram-style editing, it’s worth having as an alternative. At least, PicMonkey is a fun alternative, especially if you are not proficient in photo editing. They have stickers, overlays, backgrounds, filters, all that jazz.

PHlearn

PHlearn is not software nor an online editor. But I figured, as long as we are talking about learning editing, a great tutorial site won’t hurt. And this is one of the best. I used them for tons of advanced stuff. But, they also do have free tutorials for beginners. There are over 600 lessons in a variety of fields from Photoshop and Lightroom to special effects. Again, there are paid tutorials, but if you are just starting out, you will still learn a lot from free resources.